According to a new translation, an ancient Greek inscription on a 2,000-year-old marble tablet is actually a yearbook for a graduating class.
According to Peter Liddel of the University of Manchester, the National Museums Scotland had the collection for over 130 years before they decided to look at the document properly.
“This is one of a small number of inscriptions in Scotland, one of three ancient Athenian inscriptions in the city of Edinburgh, so it’s absolutely exciting,” Liddel told NPR’s All Things Considered.
Liddel is on the editorial committee of the project Attic Inscriptions Online, which published the new translation on May 31.
“When we looked a bit closer at this inscription, we discovered that it was in fact, a new document, something quite different from anything known before,” Liddel said.
“We don’t have objective accounts of ancient history,” Liddel said. “What we have to do is piece together ancient history from the fragments that exist, and this is one of those.”
